FRONTESPIZIO - Cooperazione Italiana allo Sviluppo

10 Aldo Morronelast three years. They are often victims of various kinds of exploitation (theft,illicit trading, begging). They come to Italy without their families and for thisreason they are easy victims.DiscussionAll countries of the world have pledged to reach the MillenniumDevelopment Goals set at the United Nations Summit in 2000.These includeambitious targets for nutrition, maternal and child health, infectiousdisease control, and access to essential medicines. Three of the eight goals aredirectly health-related; all of the others have important indirect effects onhealth. Twenty-five years ago, the Declaration of Alma-Ata challenged theworld to embrace the principles of primary health care as the way to overcomegross health inequalities between and within countries. “Health for all”became the slogan for a movement. It was not just an ideal but an organizingprinciple: everybody needs and is entitled to the highest possible standardof health. The principles defined at that time remain indispensable for a coherentvision of global health. This entails working with countries not onlyto confront health crises, but to construct sustainable and equitable healthsystems. Foreign residents have equal rights with Italians in relation to accessto public national health service. Urgent or essential hospital treatment isprovided free of charge to illegal migrants who do not have the means to payfor it, together with care in relation to pregnancy and for minors, vaccinations,diagnosis, and treatment of infectious diseases.Almost 57 million people died in 2002, 10.5 million (nearly 20%) of whomwere children under 5 years of age. Of these child deaths, 98% occurred indeveloping countries. Of the 20 countries in the world with the highest childmortality, probability of death under 5 years of age, 19 are in Africa. Fifteencountries, mainly European but including Japan and Singapore, had childmortality rates in 2002 of less than 5 per 1000 live births. Many countries ofthe Eastern Mediterranean Region and in Latin America and Asia have partlyshifted towards the cause-of-death pattern observed in developed countries.Here, the perinatal conditions have replaced infectious diseases as theleading cause of death and are now responsible for one-fifth to one-third ofdeaths. Such a shift in the cause-of-death pattern has not occurred in sub-Saharan Africa, where perinatal conditions rank in fourth place. In 2002,more than 4 million African children died. About 90% of all HIV/AIDS andmalaria deaths in children in developing countries occur in sub-SaharanAfrica, where 23% of the world’s births and 42% of the world’s child deaths